Former alcoholic Alastair Campbell tells Angela Levin why he is backing
a new campaign to get us all to think more about how much we drink.

Last month Alastair Campbell played the bagpipes during the wedding ceremony of Kate Garvey, Tony Blair’s former diary secretary, to Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. Afterwards, he walked down the street and stopped beside a homeless man sitting on the pavement.

“We chatted a bit,’’ he recalls. ''Then I gave him a £50 note. I asked him to promise to buy food, but I don’t know if he bought a bottle of scotch instead.’’ He pauses. ''Did you know I buy more copies of The Big Issue than anyone else?”

Down and outs touch a sensitive nerve in the man who was Blair’s notoriously brutal spin doctor from 1997 to 2003. “I have a great sense of 'there but for the grace of God go I’,” he confesses, then adds with a rueful smile. “Not that I do God.”

It is an extraordinary admission for the 55-year-old, regarded during the Blair years as the second most powerful man in the country. But in the Eighties, drink was his demon to such an extent that he now admits, “that man on the street could have been me”.

It is one reason why he is supporting Alcohol Concern’s Dry January campaign. The charity recently reported that more than 10 million people in England are now drinking above the recommended levels. This latest initiative is aimed at social rather than alcohol-dependent drinkers and encourages them, with the help of sponsorship from family and friends, not to drink at all for the entire month of January.

“I like the campaign because it is not preachy,” Campbell continues. “Instead it will shine a spotlight on an individual’s drinking, and anything that makes people think about how much they drink is a good thing. I will definitely do it and like the idea of getting sponsored not to drink. Britain has a real problem with alcohol at every level of society.”

Campbell’s drinking hit its peak in 1986 and triggered a serious psychotic episode. He then stayed dry for 13 years but, to the horror of many, including his psychiatrist, slipped “gently” off the wagon in 1999 and has since “occasionally” indulged in one or two glasses of wine. Something alcoholics rarely do without catastrophic results. “So far,” he boasts, “I have never got drunk.” But why do something so potentially self-destructive? “I like to test myself,” he replies, “but I am aware it is a confused message.”

We meet at his home in north-west London. He is in talkative mood and punctuates his soul-baring with jokes and political point scoring. An attempt, perhaps, to lessen the grim impact of his story, which sounds like a descent into Hell.

“I was 13 or 14 when I got drunk for the first time,” he begins. “It was New Year’s Eve and my family had travelled from Yorkshire to near Edinburgh to be with my father’s family. All the cousins got drunk.

“My first visit to a doctor when alcohol was mentioned was when I was 17. I was drinking lots of beer and smoking heavily and worried about pains in my chest and stomach. The doctor asked about my drinking and although I halved the real quantity, she told me to be careful because I could end up having a real problem.”

He took no notice and drank “phenomenal amounts” while at Caius College, Cambridge, where he read French and German.

“I drank to excess because I liked doing it – often double figures of beer and scotch a day. Sometimes I went on four-day benders. My reputation for being quite aggressive began at primary school and I got into many drunken fights at Cambridge.”

He pushes his hair away from his forehead. “Can you see two scars above my eyebrows? They are left over from when I drunkenly tried to headbutt a glass door open rather than turn the handle. I bled big time, had stitches and went to the May Ball with a huge bandage around my head.”

Somehow he passed his exams. His drinking continued when he started working as a junior reporter on local papers. He met Fiona Millar, Cherie Blair’s former adviser, when they were both young reporters at the Plymouth-based Sunday Independent. They have been together for 33 years and have two sons and a daughter. “Fiona’s never been a drinker but originally thought I was life and soul of the party,” he smiles.

Alastair Campbell with his partner, Fiona Millar who supported him through his trying times with alcohol (REX FEATURES)

Alcohol increased its hold on Campbell and he began using local pubs almost as an office. “Whenever I went into a pub I’d find some sort of a story. I’d persuade myself it was work but the reality was I was feeding the developing addiction.”

In 1982, he and Fiona moved to London and he joined the Daily Mirror, where there was a “huge drinking culture”. He became political correspondent before moving four years later to the now-defunct Today newspaper. “By now I was drinking so heavily, I’d throw up every morning. Sometimes I’d make myself sick, and sometimes it happened naturally, but either way it helped relieve the feelings of poison inside me.

“I’d then persuade myself I was OK. Working out how and when I could have a drink dominated my thinking, but didn’t stop me writing. Fiona was worried about me but if she mentioned my drinking I aggressively argued back.”

Did he ever hit her? “There is a powerful link between alcoholism and domestic violence and abuse, but I have never hit Fiona, although she has hit me. Two months before my meltdown I was drinking beer until I got drunk and then I’d start with spirits and wine.”

In 1986, after a massive drinking session the previous night (he didn’t even go home), he flew to Scotland to write about Neil Kinnock, then Opposition leader. After a busy day, he finally arrived at Hamilton where Kinnock was making a speech. “I’d only drunk half a pint of beer but my mind was racing so fast I thought it would explode,” he recalls. “I tried ringing Fiona, then my family and some friends on a landline, but didn’t dial nine to get an outside line. When no one answered I went into a major panic. I thought the letters on the number plates of cars going past the building were sending me messages. It was a test which if I failed, I’d die.

“I had just emptied my pockets on the floor when two plain-clothes policeman came up and asked if I was OK. I said, 'I don’t think I am,’ and was arrested for my own safety. Once in the police cell I asked for champagne, drew on the walls and took all my clothes off.

Campbell at the Labour Party Conference in 1995 (REX FEATURES)

“When a doctor turned up and asked if I was all right I thought he was asking me if I was right wing and I said, 'No, I am not.’ He asked what was wrong and I said, 'Nothing.’ The conversation went round and round until I was taken to Ross Hall Hospital in Paisley.”

He pauses and smiles. “The Telegraph right-wing readers will love this bit. I was the only journalist at Today to refuse to accept the paper’s private medical insurance and the first person committed to a private hospital.

“When I arrived at Ross Hall, I noticed Bupa signs everywhere and, as mad as I was, said, 'I am not going to a Bupa hospital.’ Someone with me said they were just adverts and it wasn’t a private hospital, which of course it was.

“I was admitted and at the side of my bed was a blue-and-red button which I thought was a political examination and another test for my life. I remained deranged and heavily medicated for a few days.

“I was seen by Dr Bennie, who said I had had a psychotic episode brought on by stress and alcohol, and that I shouldn’t drink for a month. As he talked, the penny dropped that I had a problem. Every rational person can tell you that you have a problem but until you accept it yourself it is no good. I did at that moment. He is a key person in my life.

“Fiona came up to Scotland the next day and burst into tears, partly I think from relief that something was being done.” Does he feel guilty about what he has put her through? “A little bit, but you blind yourself as to how your drinking might affect other people. Someone once asked her what was it like living with me and she said, 'On balance I’m glad we stayed together.’

“At the time,” he adds, “I thought, 'Great, thanks.’ But actually I think that it is about as good as it gets for most relationships. I feel the same about her. We have had lots of ups and downs but there is a real strength to the relationship.

“After a few days in hospital I went home. I decided to stop drinking without help. I didn’t want to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, but was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. There is a powerful link between alcoholism and depression. Fiona then developed a spasm in her face and couldn’t move one side. She went to the doctor, burst into tears and told him about me. He suggested I came to see him. I went reluctantly, but he went on to become someone I could lean on from time to time when I felt I needed a drink.

“The impact of the drinking was that I thought I was finished as a journalist, but luckily Richard Stott, then editor of the Mirror, asked me to come back when I was fit.

“I decided to be totally open. I told everyone at work I had had a psychotic episode and had stopped drinking. I took it one day at a time and counted each day as if I was scoring runs at cricket. I stopped after several thousand.”

Earlier this year, he made a documentary called Cracking Up for BBC Two, when he revisited Hamilton as part of his personal campaign to be more open about mental health and alcoholism. He is also captain of the Leukaemia Research triathlon team and has raised well over seven figures for the charity.

Yet he is still plagued by regular bouts of depression. “The drink covered it up and it has now come to the surface. It’s horrible and hard for the family and I see a psychiatrist when I need to. He disapproves that I have the odd glass of wine.”

So why take such a risk?

“Going 13 years without drink is one of my triumphs and I sort of wish I had kept going,” he admits. “I don’t know why I had that first drink again, but I have created difficult situations for myself all my life. I have a personality that needs me to do things I shouldn’t. But I haven’t drunk beer or spirits since 1986. Nor have I ever been drunk again. The benefits of being sober are that I feel better, have more energy, think more clearly and my relationships are better, both generally and with Fiona.

“I feel incredibly grateful that she didn’t dump me when I was hospitalised, because she could have done. I was also lucky to be offered professional opportunities, that my friends stayed with me, that I found a doctor I could talk to and didn’t hit the policeman who arrested me. Otherwise I could well have ended up on the street. It could happen to anyone.”

Middle-age, middle-class drinking

A report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this year found that 16 per cent of people aged 45-64 drink alcohol on more than five days in a week, compared with around three per cent of younger people.

Of these middle-aged drinkers, one in three men and one in five women will consume more alcohol on a weekly basis than experts consider safe (three to four units per day for men and two to three units for women).

The research also demonstrated that men and women in managerial or professional jobs were more likely to drink over the recommended daily amount than people with routine or manual jobs.

The subsequent effects on health are highlighted by an Alcohol Concern report published last month, which calculated that alcohol-related hospital admissions of adults aged 55-74 cost the NHS £825.6 million a year, 13 times more than the cost for 16-24-year-olds.

“It is the unwitting chronic middle-aged drinkers who are taking serious risks with their health” said Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, former President of the Royal College of Physicians.

Drinking twice the recommended daily amount has been found to increase the risk of liver disease sevenfold, mouth cancer fivefold and stroke threefold. - Olivia Parker

Dry January: how to sign up

Dry January, launched by Alcohol Concern, aims to raise awareness among drinkers – particularly regular tipplers among the middle-aged and middle classes – of the long-term effects alcohol can have on health.

Dry January requires people to give up alcohol completely for the 31 days of January and to invite friends and family to sponsor them to stay dry and so raise money for Alcohol Concern.

To find out more and to sign up, visit dryjanuary.org.uk Look for Dry January on Facebook and Twitter.